A plea for the children caught in the crossfire

To those who support the ongoing Israeli bombardment of Gaza, I would ask whether it is legitimate to target a home and kill a whole family of children in order to assassinate a single Hamas official ('' 'Deadliest day': children killed in Gaza air raids'', smh.com.au, November 19).

Quite apart from the legitimacy of targeted assassinations, I think the answer is obviously no. Israel, as an occupying power, is by international law required to be as responsible for the citizens of Gaza as it is for its own citizens. It has failed this test. Quite clearly, Israel has double standards and considers Palestinian children less worthy of protection than Israeli children. I wonder what Anne Frank would have made of the current situation? I suspect her sympathies might have been with the murdered children, not with the government that killed them.

Geoff Gordon Cronulla

Your report on the ''deadliest day'' in Gaza, highlights the saddening daily experience for the people there. Sadly, culpability for this reality rests squarely with the elected leadership of the Palestinian people, whose founding charter still calls for the annihilation of the Jewish state.

In 2005, Israel left every inch of the Gaza Strip to demonstrate its unwavering commitment towards achieving a true and just two-state solution.

What resulted from these overtures to peace? More than 9000 rockets fired at Israel's civilian population.

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While Israel has achieved the lowest civilian casualty ratio of any modern army fighting in asymmetrical warfare anywhere in the world, the Palestinian leadership commits the ''double'' war crime of not only consciously targeting Israeli civilians, but even worse, firing these rockets from schools, mosques and built-up urban residences from within their own civilian populations.

For anyone that truly cares about the welfare of the Palestinian people and their legitimate rights to self-determination, abhorrence and an outcry needs be directed at their deplorable leadership for doing everything but working towards principled outcomes.

Evan Guttman North Bondi

Paul Norton (Letters, November 19) is right to point out that the colour of the spilt blood of innocent Israelis is the same as that of innocent Palestinians. However, he fails to point out that there are a fair few more litres of Palestinian blood to examine.

Andrew Chatterton Lane Cove

The Hamas spokesman Salama Maroof states that ''Israel started this war with its assassination of Ahmed al-Jabari''. This statement simply ignores the continuous rocket attacks upon southern Israel which recently greatly intensified and has led to Israel needing to defend itself and its citizens.

We all regret the ongoing deaths, particularly of children. However, if Hamas and its terrorist partners ceased their rocket barrages, which have endangered the lives of more than 1 million Israelis, including children who bear the emotional scars of having to find bomb shelters within 15 seconds, then most certainly peace would prevail.

If the money spent by Hamas in Gaza on weapons were instead spent on infrastructure, schools and community welfare how much better would the lives of Palestinians be?

George Foster Abbotsford

Thanks, Ian Fraser (Letters, November 19). I'm sure the people of Gaza will be relieved to know they are being bombed by a nation that you describe as ''the closest thing to a liberal democracy in the Middle East''. Especially the 400-plus civilians dead and injured due to Israel's ''surgical strikes'' (''Bombing continues day and night'', November 19).

Nick Tesoriero Randwick

So-called efficiency cuts will cost schoolchildren dearly

What he does not tell the public when he says ''that savings in public education are coming from efficiencies in the back office and will not affect students'' is that students are right now being directly affected by cuts to education budgets.

What will be the long-term effect on students now that the drug education counsellors are being taken out of NSW schools?

What will be the effect of the diminution of special needs disability teachers and support staff in schools now that they are being reduced in schools?

How is it not going to affect a child's concentration and continuity of education when they are used as runners and quasi support staff for teachers when paid support staff are further reduced to meet the unnecessary $1.7 billion cuts to public and private education in NSW.

The truth is the O'Farrell government is targeting the weakest link, schools and schoolchildren, to promulgate an economic rationalist and conservative ideology.

Ted Bassingthwaighte Hamilton South

Public has more insight on the real mudslinger

Paul Sheehan seems to think all the mudslinging in the US election, and now in Australia, comes from the Democrats and Labor respectively (''Muddying waters on way to polls'', November 19).

He suggests Paul Ryan is an earnest, moderate conservative, but Ryan's plan for the US economy is extremist, and in the view of mainstream economists would lead the US into a disastrous recession.

He suggests Obama's early attack on Romney as a tax-avoiding plutocrat was a ''cruel parody of the truth'', but what Romney himself said in the infamous 47 per cent speech revealed his obnoxious attitudes.

His ridiculously mendacious attack ads on Obama's car industry package called to mind Karl Rove - the so-called genius of presidential campaigning in the US - who noted that his success was based on ''scaring the s--t out of stupid people''.

Mr Sheehan then pivots to Australia to argue that Julia Gillard is mainly to blame for personal-attack politics, but the recent polls - not encouraging for either side - suggest the public is quite aware of Mr Abbott's penchant for ugly abuse of his opponents, and does not like it.

Jim Douglas Kingston (ACT)

Paul Sheehan states that it is a lie that ''Abbott has described the science of climate change as 'crap' ''. The actual words reported to have been said, when talking about climate change at an October 2009 meeting in the Victorian town of Beaufort, were ''The argument is absolute crap …''. As the argument is based upon science, most people would regard the meanings of the two statements as synonymous. One can only wonder how Sheehan would interpret Abbott's query: ''If you want to put a price on carbon, why not just do it with a simple tax?''

Peter Nash Fairlight

A cruel illusion

What an appalling and outrageous cartoon from Alan Moir on Monday. It was highly offensive to Christians and insensitive to the victims of sexual abuse. Depicting Cardinal Pell as the chief executioner was not only unfair but untrue.

As is widely acknowledged sexual abuse happens in a number of environments. Yes, the church has had its fair share of problems but it is not the only institution that has failed. Images like this do nothing to focus attention on the real issues that need to be dealt with.

Kieran Walton Baulkham Hills

I am appalled by the Moir cartoon on Monday. Moir has often done some clever work, but this is a disgraceful depiction of a man who is doing all he can to help the victims of this terrible scourge.

Why doesn't the media quieten down now and allow the government to get on with the royal commission so that the victims can be heard and the guilty punished.

Clare Walsh Willoughby

If Catholic church leaders and, for that matter, Rome, doubt the deleterious effect the unconscionable systemic child sexual abuse has had and continues to have on ordinary, disillusioned and disgusted faithful, then they only need take one glance at Moir's powerfully poignant cartoon. It is truly portent.

Bernadette Scadden Earlwood

Regarding the Herald's Encompass claims, if your investigators really want a motherload of information regarding child abuse claims against Catholic Church personnel they should turn their attention to the office of the NSW Ombudsman which has monitored many of the internal investigations by the Church's Towards Healing organisation of child abuse complaints for the last decade or so (''Catholic Church's secret sex files'', November 17-18).

Such investigations and subsequent action against abusers must be done to the satisfaction of the Ombudsman as part of his statutory obligations. This process, put in place by the Catholic Church to deal with complaints, was praised by Justice Wood as a model for other organisations.

The result is that it can be reasonably claimed, although it is impossible to be absolutely certain, that there is no Catholic priest in ministry in Australia who is an active paedophile.

Reverend Leo Francis Donnelly Port Macquarie

Evidence is there

This is the sound of history being repeated: scepticism from the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association towards scientists discovering methane leakage from coal seam gas mining (''Report on gasfield leaks is premature, says industry'', November 19). The association follows in the footsteps of Union Carbide in Bhopal, Tokyo Electric Power in Fukushima and Big Tobacco worldwide. The researchers' findings, together with findings from independent researchers in the US, give us due warning about the environmental impacts of coal seam gas. As a society, do we learn from history or repeat it? Do we listen to people whose profits depend on there not being a problem or to the science? Do we proceed with the planned massive expansion of coal seam gas extraction, or call a moratorium?

Thea Ormerod Kingsgrove

Pollie's sidestep

Michael Costa's letter in defence of the leasing arrangements at Circular Quay on Monday was typically full of pollie speak. Yes, apparently there was rationalisation, outsourcing, administrative structure, common lease conditions and, of course, administrative reform with the aim of reducing government inefficiency and waste. But why was there no public tender? As my school teachers were wont to tell me many years ago after marking my exam papers, you haven't answered the question, Michael.

Santo Calabrese Cherrybrook

Online hating

A good pal has decided to stop online dating as well (''Logging off the horror of online dating'', November 19). Here's the scam - meet in a fancy restaurant, enjoy a fabulous meal, my friend goes to the ladies to freshen up only to get back to an empty table and unpaid bill (which of course she pays) and then to make it worse, he sends a few nasty ''explanatory'' text messages.

After hearing many awful stories about online dating where guys want either a free meal and/or porn star sex and girls want either a free meal and/or porn star sex I'm grateful to be in a relationship which supplies both (although I do all the cooking).

Dorin Suciu Valentine

Living inside a 'concrete bunker'

Those of us who were routinely abused during childhood in the 1950s and earlier, are relieved that Julia Gillard has called a royal commission ''which will inquire into all institutions''. However, the Pandora's Box is the abuse that damaged whole generations of children in their own homes.

Cathy Kezelman's story brought streams of tears to my eyes on Monday morning, not because of her experience as a child, but because the words she used to describe her experience of compartmentalisation in the wake of that trauma triggered a jolt of recognition (''I hated myself for the things I'd done as part of the abuse'', November 19).

I, too, have been ''defensive and harsh and impatient, especially of vulnerability''.

I shun intimate contact and although I am gregarious around crowds of people, I have ''built a concrete bunker around my inner self'', as an acquaintance of mine once commented.

My one pretence of marriage failed, and I have been extremely over-protective of my now adult children, who shrug their shoulders as if to say, ''That's mum''.

Now facing the future living alone (which I have accepted as the way it has been and always will be), I weep for my enormous loss, and also for the millions of others who are living a seemingly ''normal'' life in our community but are so terribly injured.

Name and address withheld

Protection racket

I am happy to keep paying the $12 ''station access fee'' at the airport so long as they give it a new name (''No ticket respite in windfall from airport train fares'', November 19). So what do you call a fee that applies only to folk accessing the airport via public transport and provides revenue to a government planning a new $10 billion motorway which by coincidence will go to the same place? For my money you can't go past the ''Airport Congestion Incentive'' or the ''Westconnex toll revenue protection tax''.

It seems the Clampetts of Beverly Hills were decades ahead of their time when they had a ''cee-ment pond'' in their backyard. They were trendsetters, not hillbillies.

Jennifer Carter Oyster Bay

Avoid a bad gamble

I hope Barry O'Farrell is astute enough to have David Murray do some serious costings on the revenue projections on James Packer's unsolicited proposal for a second casino (''Second casino 'bad deal for state coffers' '', November 19). If O'Farrell relies on Crown's figures he is a fool.

Lindsay Somerville Lindfield

Coach must inspire

Fair enough, Jerry Stiel (Letters, November 19). But surely a coach is largely responsible for ensuring players are fit enough to endure the rigours of the sport they play. If he (or she) cannot inspire team members to put in the fitness hours and effort to play the sport, neither that coach nor the slack players belong on any team that represents our country. And, considering some of the sports-related stories in the media of late, fitness is not just physical.

J-Alice Hofler Dee Why

Drug paradox

Nothing is more ironic than ''legal'' drugs being sold online in Australia that can cause potential neurological damage and our own country banning drugs such as heroin and cannabis that have proven medical advantages (''Dangerous new drugs sold on web 'silk road' '', November 19). Another failure of Australia's so-called ''war on drugs''.

Vivienne Moxham-Hall Balmain

Diving proof

Robert Pallister (Letters, November 19) is waiting for an AOC reaction to Matthew Mitcham's drug-taking admission. Judging by his results in London, it's pretty clear that crystal meth is not performance enhancing.

Alan Marel North Curl Curl

Me, me, memes?

Andrew Macintosh, if you find out what a meme is, can you let me know how you pronounce it? Memmay? Mehmeh? Given the self-centred society we live in, I guess it's probably ''me-me''.